Commercial solar systems are designed to help businesses manage their electrical consumption and costs. In XCEL teritory, any system over 10 kilowatts in size is considered a commercial or business installation, complete with the benefit of free usage of electricity produced in addition to collecting produciton fees from the green tags.

Beware the solar salesman who tells you he can eliminate your demand charges.  If you are using electricity outside of solar power generation hours, you will pay demand fees! But there is a silver lining in this cloud.  Systems over 10K in size qualify for green tag production fees, allowing the double dip.  This menas you use the electricity you generate for free, and tehn they pay you for every kilowatt hour of generation, wwhether you use it or not.  These additional revenues can often more than offset the demand and other fees you have on your meters.

In fact, many businesses are seeing solar as a way to add a revenue stream to their capital plant! Even with a retail rate of $7-8 per watt to install solar modules, with te utility rebate, the government tax rebate/grant and other state and loca incentives, the payback period of a solar system is often less than 5 years, with ROI in excess of 10% or more.